Jon Hicks launched a new site last week that hit me in a way the internet almost never does these days. It’s about the band Stars of the Lid and it’s called Stars of the Lid Forever. He describes it as “a fan-led project to archive their live recordings”. No subscription push. No tracking. No hustle. Just a guy building a home for something he loves.

He also wrote a short blog post about the project. Worth a read. It captures the odd electricity that runs through a very specific obsession.

One of the shows he archived was the April 22, 2008 set in Champaign. Inside a planetarium. I was there and I don’t think I’ve experienced anything quite like seeing Stars of the Lid with a full dome show spinning above us. Jon asked if he could include the poster I made for it. That print was the first screen printed gig poster I ever designed. As a kid who spent hours a day scanning through the original gigposters.com, that was quite a milestone for me. Still the one people mention most often when they look through my work. They like the scooter guy.

In early 2008 I was a year into designing show posters and quarter-page newspaper ads for The Canopy Club. The office sat in the middle of the University of Illinois campus. Parking was expensive and limited, so I sold my car and bought a 50cc scooter that looked like it had been designed by a toy company. It could carry groceries under the seat. Chinese takeout lived in the backpack. I remember riding it to the AT&T store the morning I bought the first iPhone, then heading straight back to the Canopy office to jailbreak it so I could swap the icons and wallpaper. I felt like my life was finally doing something interesting. I was working in the middle of the hyper buzz of a live music venue while there were also so many exciting things going on with the web and technology before the technology and web made us all so isolated and lonely.

Working on my new site this week and digging through old files has me feeling a little nostalgic. Remembering who I was when I made that poster. 2008 was a wild little window. My first year working on what was then called Pygmalion Music Festival. Yo La Tengo headlined. I was full time at a music venue and working with Seth at smilepolitey.com and doing some other related things. I was learning how to make things that meant something to me and maybe to other people too. I also made four or five prints that year.

It’s funny how a fan project can pull you back into the version of yourself who thought anything was possible. It reminded me what I cared about back then. And maybe pointed a little at where I should aim myself now.